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Ransomware threat shows no sign of slowing down

Those making predictions about what’s in store for the channel next year point to the persistent and growing problems caused by cyber criminals

Simon Quicke
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Published: 16 Dec 2024 9:45

Ransomware will continue to be one of the main threats the channel is helping customers protect against.

Despite being around for years, the criminal use of the tactic remains widespread, targeting customers of all sizes.

As a result, the channel is being advised to keep on top of their anti-ransomware skills and solution offerings.

“Ransomware will remain the number one cyber threat in 2025,” said Andrew Eva, global chief information officer at Assured Data Protection. “This is likely to see the continuation of a trend that has become well established this year, with organisations increasingly focusing on disaster recovery and backup, and becoming more concerned with DR capabilities and understanding the importance of third-party recovery sites, or ‘clean rooms’.”

He added that the channel was under pressure itself to demonstrate it could protect data against ransomware threats.

“Organisations are also increasingly expressing concerns around the safety of their data when sharing it with third parties,” said Eva. “Beyond data compliance concerns, they want to know how those third parties use AI themselves and where their customer data resides, seeking assurances that it won’t be fed into AI models.

“MSPs providing backup and disaster recovery services will need to be able to provide watertight assurances concerning customer data and their own AI usage,” he added.

Evolution of channel offerings

Eva said there was also likely to be some evolution of channel offerings next year as more services were blended to improve customer protection.

“In 2025, we’re likely to see continued integration between backup, ransomware detection and antivirus systems,” he said. “This will extend into intrusion detection systems, which can identify known exploits and vulnerabilities. Building on developments we’ve seen in recent years, we’ll see advancements in the ability to extend scanning for exploits and vulnerabilities into metadata.”

Earlier this week, the latest threat report from NCC Group, covering ransomware activities in November, shared details of a month-on-month rise, underlining the size of the problem facing customers across Europe.

“The relentless activity of various cyber threat actors has almost become commonplace, but the focus on the industrial sector and particularly organisations that operate as part of critical national infrastructure remains a real concern,” said Matt Hull, head of threat intelligence at NCC Group. “As 2024 draws to a close, the immediate global threat of ransomware remains, so we’d urge companies to be more vigilant than ever when protecting against attacks,” he added.

Eva said that one of the impacts of the continual threat of ransomware was to add to the pressure on managed service providers to provide customers with access to cyber insurance.

“As the threat of ransomware continues, for many organisations, cyber insurance is an ongoing requirement,” he said. “As insurance companies become more knowledgeable about the exact nature of risks faced by different kinds of businesses, their cyber insurance requirements are becoming more stringent and increasingly stipulate as part of a checklist the necessity for immutable backups.

“Next year, we’re also expecting to see the continuation of a trend that has emerged over the past two years for enterprises that don’t currently have cyber insurance,” said Eva. “That is, enterprises reaching out to data protection service providers to gain access to cyber insurance.”

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